The lasting effects of family separations, as seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old

Story by Holly Yan and Claudia Morales, CNN
Video by Deborah Brunswick and Anne Lagamayo, CNN

Updated 5:30 AM EDT, Sat September 08, 2018

(CNN) Alejandro and his mom journeyed for days without eating, stuck in a putrid bus with 65 strangers stuffed "all on top of each other."

Then they reached the US, where they say their nightmare really began.

Alejandro, 13, said he didn't know what was going to happen to himself or his mom during the months they were separated.

The Guatemalan migrants, desperate to flee violence back home, left everything they knew for one dangerous attempt to seek US asylum. But what they faced in the US turned out to be far more arduous than their grueling 9-day trek across Mexico.

"We just thought that they would empathize with us and that it would be different. But it didn't go that way," 13-year-old Alejandro said. "We had to suffer. I was inside a shelter for two months, and my mom was in prison for two months."

In a rare interview with a child separated at the border,we see through the eyes of a boy what life was like inside a shelter with strangers during the government's "zero-tolerance" policy.

We hear directly from a child about the long-term trauma he says he experienced as a result of his sudden removal from his mother.

Alejandro stepped up to protect his mom, insisting on walking her home from work every day.

"He would go every day, rain or shine, thinking that one day (his father) would suddenly kill me," Dalia said. "We couldn't take it anymore. That's the only reason why I came to this country. ... Every day, I had that fear that one day I wouldn't return home. I couldn't take his threats or abuse anymore."

So Dalia made the gut-wrenching decision to leave her parents in a gamble to give her son a better life in the US.

Alejandro said the separation from his grandparents was particularly heartbreaking.

"It's hard to come and know they are no longer with you, to know that you left them behind, to know that you're not going to be there anymore to enjoy their company," he said.

"I'll never see them again, hug or spend a single moment with them, a plate of food, a dinner, a birthday. And my family is so close that they were with me up until the moment that I left the country."

9 days of hell

The journey from Guatemala to San Luis, Arizona, stretched more than 1,800 miles. Dalia said she paid people to help get her and her son to the US.

"Days and nights in a bus, we slept hidden in the mountains," she said. They went "entire days without eating, with my son, crammed in buses without seats .... with 65 people all on top of each other."

"Yes, we did something that we shouldn't have. We crossed illegally," Alejandro said. "But we were fleeing danger."

Dalia said she and Alejandro had been denied visas to the US. When they arrived at the US border, they had no control of where the smugglers would drop them off. So they were left at an area with no legal port of entry.

They both said they were expecting to turn themselves in to border patrol, armed with Dalia's documents to make a case for asylum. But shortly after crossing, Dalia said, a border patrol agent had already approached them.

As expected, the mother and son were taken into custody. What they didn't expect was the trauma of separation.

No time for a hug goodbye

Like thousands of other migrants, Dalia and Alejandro had no idea they would be split up and sent to detention centers across the country.

Alejandro vividly remembers the day in an Arizona detention center when he was suddenly removed from his mother.

"I'll never forget that day. It was a Tuesday that they took me out of the prison and they took me on a flight to Miami," Alejandro said.

The separation happened so quickly, he wasn't allowed to hug his mother goodbye.

"No, they wouldn't allow any physical contact. We couldn't touch," Alejandro said. "I only told her through the window that I loved her very much and that everything would be OK. All I could say was 'goodbye,' and they took me."

'A nightmare that would never end'

Across the country, in a children's shelter full of strangers, Alejandro's mind raced with anxiety.

"My days were just thinking, what was going to happen? What am I doing here?" he said. "I was so worried that the frustration wouldn't let me sleep ... I felt like it was a nightmare that would never end."

He said he was treated kindly by staff members, who fed him well, made sure he went to classes, and gave him time to play outside.

But for a boy accustomed to protecting his mother, "to know that she was suffering" from the separation overwhelmed him.

"I couldn't do anything for my mother, not even defend her," he said. "I fell into a deep depression."

In their two months apart, Alejandro said he was able to speak with his mother by phone about three times.

He filled his days with classes, games and playing soccer with other detained children.

Alejandro said he tries to calm his anxiety by playing soccer. He hopes to play on a school team in the US.

"The friends I made, I'd go out and play, (and) they helped me forget a little that I was inside there."

One friend gave him a glimpse into the horrors that other migrant children faced.

"I had a friend that I was close to, he was fleeing his country because of the mafia," Alejandro said.

"The gang members wanted him to join the gang, and he didn't want to. And he told me that he came home from school and found his mother dead in the bathroom and his sister in her bedroom and there was a note on the table that said, 'This is the consequence for not joining the gang.'"

As the weeks passed, Alejandro said he became emotionally numb doing "the same thing every day -- like we were mannequins doing the same thing every day because we didn't have any feelings."

One morning, as Alejandro brushed his teeth, an adult came and told him to pack his suitcases. Then he heard the words he'd been waiting for: "Congratulations. You're leaving."

He was put on a plane to Phoenix for his long-awaited reunion with his mother -- this time, at another detention center.

"I couldn't hug her because the official didn't allow to touch. Physical contact wasn't permitted," Alejandro said. "They took us to another cell, and we were talking there, whispering, because they didn't permit us to speak. And (I) started telling my mom everything."

Dalia, whose asylum case is pending, was fitted with an ankle monitor and was allowed to leave with her son.

"They are about being far from my mom," he said. "My mom was far, in another place. My mind was so frustrated that sometimes I still think that I'm there. Sometimes I sit in one spot and I start to visualize everything that I lived, everything that happened to me."

Alejandro, at his aunt's Chicago home, wants to finish school in the US -- "and when tomorrow comes, be somebody."

The gravity of that trauma can only be understood by the children who endured it.

"It hurt me so much because (my mom) was the only thing I had. I was completely alone," Alejandro said. "My mom, the person who supported me since I was little ... she's always been by my side. I didn't have any other support -- nothing more than my family and my mom."

While many kids his age are embarrassed by their moms or want to assert their independence, Alejandro now clings to his mother like a toddler.

"I wish I could be with my mom 24 hours a day," he said. "I want to have her near me always. ... Sometimes my mom jokes with me, 'You still sleep with me? Aren't you embarrassed?' "

Dalia says she doesn't mind her son curling up next to her, or trailing her everywhere she goes.

"He says he does not feel safe sleeping alone," Dalia said. "He doesn't want to leave my side because he thinks they're going to separate us again."

So after all this agony, the grueling separation and the lasting trauma, would Dalia make the same decision again to come to the US?

"Honestly, to protect my life and to have a better life with my son, yes."

Alejandro said his dream is to grow up in the US -- "to live with my mom, go to school, get an education, and when tomorrow comes, be somebody."

He knows making a life in a new country would be difficult, and there will be plenty of critics who don't want him here. But "everything in life costs something. Nothing is easy. And whatever is easy isn't worth it."

Alejandro still grapples with the heartache of missing his grandparents. But he says life back home is just too dangerous.

"I can't return to my country, even though I want to see my family again," he said.

"I wish I could have put them all in my suitcase and bring them with me. But I couldn't."